A lucid dream occurs when the dreamer is aware of the events happening during the dream. Studies suggest that a person can learn to lucid dream by some simple steps outlined in this video. Lucid dreams are strongly associated with REM sleep. REM sleep is more abundant just before being awake. Other ways to practice are to keep a dream journal or practice reality checks like turning on a light switch.

Where is the “seat of consciousness” in the brain? This is often presented as an enduring mystery of modern neuroscience, and to an extent it is. It is a very complex question and we don’t yet have anything like a complete answer, or even a consensus. The question itself may contain false assumptions – what, exactly, is consciousness, and perhaps what we call consciousness emerges from the collective activity of the entire brain, not a subset. Perhaps every network in the brain is conscious to some degree, and what we experience as our consciousness is the aggregate effect of many little consciousnesses.

One way to approach this question (really a set of related questions) is to study different mental states – altered states of consciousness. How those differences relate to brain function are likely to tell us something about the contribution of that brain function to full wakeful consciousness.

A new study by scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry in Munich and for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and from Charité in Berlin attempts to do just that. They have studied the brain activity of those in normal dreaming and in a so-called lucid dreaming state.

Dreaming is an excellent subject of study for questions of consciousness. I often use dreaming when discussing this topic as an example of an altered state that everyone experiences. While dreaming we have awareness and experience and are forming memories (at least sometimes). When we remember our dreams, however, they don’t quite make sense to our waking selves. Things happen in dreams, for example, that …

Lucid dreamers, people who can deliberately control their dreams during sleep, have long fascinated scientists. And now brain scans of those self-aware sleepers could offer insight into the seat of self-reflection in the mind.

It is difficult to get a full picture of what goes on in the brain when we make the transition from sleep to wakefulness. In fact, the specific areas of the brain underlying our restored self-perception and consciousness when we wake up have eluded scientists, according to a statement by the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. But a team of researchers was able to get a picture of that isolated activity in lucid dreamers.

“In a normal dream, we have a very basal consciousness, we experience perceptions and emotions but we are not aware that we are only dreaming,” study researcher Martin Dresler, of Max Planck, said in a statement. “It’s only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state.”